The milking done, I sat on Uncle Eb's knee in the door-yard with all the rest of that household, hearing many tales of the wilderness, and of robbery and murder on Paradise Road.

I got the impression that it was a country of unexampled wickedness and ferocity in men and animals.

One man told about the ghost of Burnt Bridge; how the bridge had burnt one afternoon and how a certain traveller in the dark of the night driving down the hill above it, fell to his death at the brink of the culvert.
'An' every night since then,' said the man, very positively, ye can hear him drivin' down thet bill--jes' as plain as ye can hear me talkin'-- the rattle o' the wheels an' all.

It stops sudden an' then ye can hear 'im hit the rocks way down there at the bottom O' the gulley an' groan an' groan.

An' folks say it's a curse on the town for leavin' thet hole open.' 'What's a ghost, Uncle Eb ?' I whispered.
'Somethin' like a swift,' he answered, 'but not so powerful.